Each week, our songwriting group from Steve Poltz’s 2025 Song Factory retreat has to write a song from a prompt or you’re kicked out. It doesn’t have to be perfect or professional, you just need to write it. Here are my contributions with the song title and the (prompt), along with explanations about my thought process while writing the lyrics, music, and the end result. Some are keepers and some aren’t, but they’re good exercises in creativity. (If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll also find some unreleased songs from my past that I have revisited.)
NEW! Week Twenty-Seven: Life is Gonna Hurt (It’s Gonna Hurt) lyrics
Well, this started out as an song about a trip to the dentist (think Ogden Nash meets Steve Martin’s character from “Little Shop of Horrors”, but one morning evolved into this sort of self-realization /mindfulness creation. Maria and I are at a cottage on Lake Huron for the weekend and recorded this straight into my computer; nothing fancy but kinda sweet.
Week Twenty-Six: A Fine Line (A Fine Line) lyrics
Wow, we’re on Week 26 – that’s half-way through the year! This one pretty much just happened, except I took a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what words and rhymes I wanted to use. (I even threw in a “Spinal Tap” reference) I sang and played ukulele into my computer, uploaded the music into Suno with a bluesy-reggae prompt and then sang along to the rendered Suno tracks. I think this is one The Ukulele Kings could cover.
Week Twenty-Five: Livin’ in a White House (White Walls) lyrics
This is truly a song of hope; like “I hope this is what happens in the end” 😉
Week Twenty-Four: Mixtape (Tape Deck) lyrics
I really like this song; the lyrics need tweaking, I should move it up a whole step to the key of A, and I need to sing it when I’m not suffering from a horrible cold – but I like it, I really like it!
Week Twenty-Three: Ohne Hast, ohne Rast (Do Not Hurry, Do Not Rest) lyrics
Well, I tried to fit as many words as I could into a 1:40 song, talk about tongue-tied! A fun little ditty about the choices we all struggle with, sang and played into Suno, rendered with a newgrass prompt, then I recorded my own vocal and a ukulele rhythm track.
Week Twenty-Two: Time Gone (Mountain Sunrise) lyrics
I originally wrote this song years ago for a family friend whose husband had died after years of marriage. I never played it for her or anyone else. When the “Mountain Sunrise” prompt came up for this week, I searched on songs I had written that had the word “mountain” in them and I rediscovered this. I played around with the lyrics, tuned my guitar to open D, and recorded it into my computer, with an egg shaker, and a vocal. I ran it through Suno, stripped off the vocal track, and added my own. Suno, as usual, changed a bit of the music, but I think it came out ok – I like the overall sound of it.
Week Twenty-One: I’d Better Not Tell You (Better Not Tell You) lyrics
I had good intentions of using Suno for my backup band on this and singing it myself, but I changed the key from D to G and believe me, it would have been painful for you to listen to, so I used the generated vocal. I also tried recording acoustic guitar and ukulele tracks, but there’s enough going on in this song as it is that they didn’t add anything, so here you go . . “oooh, oooh”
Week Twenty: Lost in Austin (Living in a Hotel) lyrics
Ok, I sort of cheated on this one. It’s been a crazy week and next week doesn’t look much better, so I took an old song of mine I really liked, but never recorded, substituted “living in a cheap motel” in place of another line, sang and played into the computer, generated a Suno mix, and then replaced the generated vocals with mine and had my partner Rhea sing a harmony. Someday, I’m going to make a professional recording of this and/or sell it to some country superstar!
Week Nineteen: Fork in the Road (Fork in the Road) lyrics
I’m at quite a few different “forks in the road” at the moment, so this one hit me at a good time to get a lot of my thoughts out. I wrote this as a two-chord song (Dm, A7) and sang it into the computer. (Suno changed the key to D#m for some reason.) I tried some different musical styles including Mambo and other Cuban styles, then Iranian folk music, and finally a sort of Buddhist meditative sound. (I’ve been following the monks and their dog Aloka’s Walk for Peace). I like the way it came out; it gathered together and musically represented many of my varied and sometimes conflicting thoughts and feelings.
Week Eighteen: Holiday Break – no assignment
Week Seventeen: It’s Hypothetical (Hypothetical) lyrics
Meet Benny G! I really struggled with this one, I just couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the prompt. I was shooting for dreaming about an ideal situation then waking up and finding it was “hypothetical”, which I’m not sure is even the proper way to use the word. My first two verses were selfish dreams and the last dream, an idealized world – all which were not real. I used it as an exercise to try and get Suno to do more of what I wanted it to do; which I was somewhat successful in accomplishing, learning a lot in the process. So here it is; presented in all its 80’s smooth jazz Kenny G-style glory.
Week Sixteen: Smell Her Feet (Grain of Salt) lyrics
I took a song from long ago that I never finished that mentioned some interesting advice (I actually did overhear this when getting my oil changed), so I worked the “grain of salt” prompt into it, did some rewriting, sang it while playing my ukulele into my computer, uploaded it into Suno, gave it a ska/calypso prompt.
Week Fifteen: I’ll Do Anything For You (Calling the Moon) lyrics
Well, I had some fun with this one. The prompt was “Calling the Moon” and started out as a tender love song, but then a couple of days ago, I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. When I came back to bed, Rhea said, “I wish you could get up and pee for me.” So, that’s when it turned into this pop-punk rendition- enjoy! (Rhea says she wants a co-writing credit 😉)
Week Fourteen: I Won’t Let You Down (No assignment; I chose an old song of mine I had never recorded before) lyrics
This was written when I was going through some pretty heavy personal turmoil in my life back in 2010. (It all turned out great in the end.)
Week Thirteen: Before the Evening Comes (Before the Evening Comes) lyrics
Well, this arrangement may have just a little bit to do with seeing Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue the previous night in Detroit. It’s my non-religious gospel song!
Week Twelve: Ashes to Ashes (Magic Dust) lyrics
This was written sounding like a cross between “Beast of Burden”, “Small Town”, and “You Were Meant for Me”. First, I generated a version with a total Mellencamp vibe. Then, since I saw The English Beat the night before and had ska on my mind, I tried that. I liked both, so combined them and came up with this rootsy-ska version. I had a family member going through a lot of esteem issues, so this is sort of “you can do it” kind of a song; It’s a good one to pump you up in the morning before you start your day.
Week Eleven: Fish Empire (Fish Empire) lyrics
This began as a political statement but soon turned into a silly song with as many fish puns as I could come up with. I played ukulele and sang into the computer and let Suno do the rest with a sort of Stray Cats vibe. (I also stole some lines from my 2008 song “Flippy & Max”)
Week Ten: How Can You Live with Yourself (Lionize) lyrics
Ben goes Broadway! I went from a Rage Against the Machine hard-rock rap to Ghanaian highlife to this; the lyrics spoken dramatically into the computer and rendered with no prompt. I love the way it builds dramatically with the lyrics.
Week Nine: Today I’m Going to Get My Shit Together (By the Skin of My Teeth) lyrics
I had just been thinking about getting some of my life more organizied and wrote this fun and goofy song pretty quickly with the first verse loosely inspired by one of Steve Poltz’s favorite stories. I talked/sang into Suno with a talking blues prompt (I couldn’t play because I had a broken hand from a fall), this could be worth revisiting, refining, and adding more verses to.
Week Eight: Let the Sleeping Dog Lie (Let the Sleeping Dog Lie) lyrics
The first verse was inspired by Brian Dunne, one of the four singer/songwriters in the wonderful band Fantastic Cat. He made some joke about not getting a DNA test because his dad warned him about the things he might find out about his grandfather. I already had the chorus rattling around in my head and it took off from there. I played guitar and sang it into my computer, and generated it with a prompt looking for a Lyle Lovett-style sound.
Week Seven: Saturn Returns – The Baseball Song (Saturn Returns) lyrics
So, I had never heard of Saturn Return and had to look it up. Then, I was watching the five-hour, 15-inning “Battle in Seattle” which my beloved Detroit Tigers lost. I thought, “a baseball game goes through the three Saturn Return stages, three innings each, and that gave me the idea to write this. I like the concept and may spend more time revising it. I finished it up with every baseball cliché I could come up with (including a shout-out to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”) and played the baritone uke and sang into the computer early this morning. I then ran it through Suno with a minimum prompt. I don’t know if Suno’s voice is sounding more like me or I’m sounding more like it, but we seem to be mind melding or something. I still would like to learn more about tweaking the program – it still messes up the phrasing and words sometimes and adds instrumental breaks when I don’t want them. (First world problems, I know.) I think I need to experiment more with the advanced options available.
Week Six: All I Feel is Blue (Synesthiesia) lyrics
The prompt was “synesthesia”, I had to look it up to see what it meant. I think I can expand on this when I have the time, but here’s the two-minute version like hit songs used to be on the radio. I was in a Cuban state of mind, so I sang and played it into my computer and went for some cumbia from my friends at Suno.
Week Five: Silent Like a Movie (Silent Like a Movie) lyrics
I wrote the lyrics and music and played my baritone uke and sang it into the computer. I then tried a cumbia and a calypso prompt and went with the calypso. I downloaded the stems and was going to record my own vocal over the instruments, but this sounded so much better I’m sticking with this. I like it, but the lyrics need tweaking a little further.
Week Four: Watching the World Explode (Traffic Light) lyrics
This song got real dark, real quick. I swore I wasn’t going to use Suno this time, but I wanted a heavy rock sound, which is hard to do with my ukulele. This started out as a totally different song, but I read “Tonight in Jungleland, the Making of Born to Run” on the way to the Los Angeles International Ukulele Festival and Chapter 1 was titled “Watch the World Explode” and sent me off on this detour. I recorded the uke and vocals and uploaded it into Suno with a prompt for dark indie rock and this is what happened!
Week Three: Perpective Changes Everything (Eights or Infinities) lyrics
This was written about how you can look at something in different ways; like the number eight and the infinity symbol look the same if you tilt your head sideways. For this, I just entered my lyrics into Suno and gave it a Gorillaz-type prompt for the music; I really like the resulting sound.
Week Two: Bicycles and Popsicles (Fossils) lyrics
Well, this turned out to be a fun one! Rhea and I were just talking about how we missed the grandkids over the past couple of weeks, since we both had come down with COVID and started thinking about all the things they like to do out here on the farm. So, we put our thoughts together and then asked the kids what they like to do out here. They sent back a list and we put the song together, Rhea (Lola, which is Filipino for grandmother) and me. (The grandkids get a co-write 😉) Groggy in the early after seeing Lake Street Dive and Lawrence in Detroit the night before and getting home quite late, I grabbed my baritone ukulele and growled into the computer. Then, I decided to upload the whole song into Suno and it came out as a country song with a female vocalist, which is just perfect for it – WTF, how does it know?
Week One: Spare Hat (Spare Hat) lyrics
With a COVID-ravaged voice, I thought it best to go for a Tom Waits vibe. Backing track generated from Suno with an acoustic guitar input, cut and pasted in Audacity, and finished off with a “vocal” in GarageBand.
Other unreleased songs written by Ben
Wait ’til Next Year lyrics
Every baseball fan can relate to this at the end of one season or another, although this catch phrase is probably most associated with the Chicago Cubs. I wrote this at the end of the 2012 World Series where pretty much everything went wrong for my Detroit Tigers as they were swept by the San Francisco Giants. Sung and played by me and rendered with a general singer-songwriter prompt.
You Were Loved lyrics
This is one of the few songs that just came out of me without a lot of editing. I had just attended the visitation for a friend of mine’s brother, who had killed himself. It’s a very literal description of everything I observed and experienced, ostensibly told from my friend’s perspective. Written in 2007, but never recorded or played out; I still get tears in my eyes when I listen to this.
In the Town of Friendship lyrics
Here’s a song I started but never finished last at songwriter’s camp. It was inspired by a village called “The Town of Friendship” I passed on the way to Big Indian from Michigan. It’s located where New York 17, 20, and 31 come together, northeast of the city of Olean. Legend has it that it was originally called Bloody Corners where there were fights, fussing, and feuding until the town folk in charge took a stand and said there’d be no more quarrels and altercations; everyone just needs to learn to get along. They named it the Town of Friendship, which I thought was lovely and quaint. I wrote most of the words during my stay in NY, but no idea for a melody and set it aside. When I got home, I took my lyrics and loaded them into the Suno AI song program with a prompt that asked it to generate an “acoustic pop song with a warm, laid-back vibe in the style of Jack Johnson’s ‘Better Together’. This is the end result; sappy and sweet just like you’d picture a Town of Friendship. I really like it and am going to do some re-writing with Pat Malloy and pursue it further off-line with The Ukulele Kings.
My New Years Wish for You lyrics
The dawn of a new year is often a time of reflecting on the past and contemplating the future. I wrote this in 2009 when I was going through a tumultuous holiday season. I made a video then and now stripped the audio track from it and created this version.